By:
David Blatt
December 3, 2009 // Updated: May 2, 2019
In the heart of one of the poorest neighborhoods in Oklahoma City, in a state-of-the-art facility beside the railroad tracks, the smell of fresh-baked bread and cookies wafts down the halls, which wind around the building to simulate streets in…
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By:
David Blatt
November 30, 2009 // Updated: May 2, 2019
With Oklahoma in the midst of what is certain to be a severe and extended fiscal crisis, protecting core public services in every area of state government from deep and painful budget cuts poses a great challenge. However, protecting the…
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By:
David Blatt
November 23, 2009 // Updated: May 1, 2019
If state fiscal conditions can be likened to the weather, it’s been apparent for many months that Oklahoma is in the midst of a toad strangler of a rain, to borrow the Tulsa World’s colorful characterization. Going into the current…
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By:
David Blatt
November 20, 2009 // Updated: May 2, 2019
This week we released the November issue of Numbers You Need (PDF), our monthly look at key data on the state’s economy and budget. As we reported in the bulletin, one of the clearest signs of the depth and length…
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By:
David Blatt
November 18, 2009 // Updated: May 2, 2019
In Oklahoma, who pays the highest percentage of their income in taxes? Those with the lowest incomes do, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). The state’s sales, excise and property taxes, which fall disproportionately on the…
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Most people in this country today agree that indigenous tribes, who lived in the Americas before Europeans arrived, were treated less than fairly by their new neighbors. Unfortunately, the inequitable and inconsistent policies with regard to Native tribes are not…
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By:
David Blatt
November 12, 2009 // Updated: May 2, 2019
An interesting new report from our friends at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities looks at whether families with income below the federal poverty level (FPL) in each state are subject to state income taxes. It finds that for…
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By:
David Blatt
November 11, 2009 // Updated: May 1, 2019
The latest monthly budget release (PDF) from Treasurer Scott Meacham provided some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that October revenues fell well short of projections, as they have in each month of the current fiscal…
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By:
Paul Shinn
November 9, 2009 // Updated: May 2, 2019
There’s been a lot of news about stimulus reporting the last few weeks. A lot of it has focused on jobs created or saved; that’s understandable since that was a major point of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which…
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By:
David Blatt
November 5, 2009 // Updated: May 2, 2019
Plunging state tax collections are wreaking havoc on the state budget and having increasingly painful effects on public services in Oklahoma. Initial estimates were for tax collections for the current year, FY ‘10, to be more than $600 million below…
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